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Afterward, Nora will realize-has realized-that it is not wise to trust spiders. She will-she does-blame herself for everything. For trusting a monster who promised her sweet things, like the chance to know her father, and the chance to be a hero, and the chance to run so fast she could escape the world that hated her more than anything.
(Years later, she will eventually stop blaming herself, after someone tells her for the last time that it was never her fault for listening to a spider that pretended not to have fangs.)
It’s too late to ask for help. Nora isn’t even sure if she’s afraid of him-Eobard. Thawne. The Reverse-Flash. Professor Zoom-the first one. The worse one? She doesn’t know that much, from Uncle Wally’s stories about Hunter, but he’s definitely as bad as his successor. She knows that now.
(She thinks about the first time she phased into his cell, late at night, using the little device Cisco makes for all the people close to him so that they don’t show up on security cameras. She thinks about when she sat on his cot, legs crossed, and listened rapturously to his stories about her father. About how brave he was, how hopeful he was, how perfect he was. She could’ve gotten it from someone else. Gotten those stories a different way. But there was something so much more special and personal about it this way.)
“Do you trust me?” He had asked her, and pressed his palm flat against the door of his cell. She’d followed suit, rising up onto her toes and eager to please as she hastily affirmed that yes, she trusted him. Nora had told him that she trusted him more than she trusted her own mother. And worst of all, it had been the truth.
(Nora wants to go back in time to shout at herself no, don’t trust him, he’s going to hurt you, he killed the woman you were named after, please don’t listen everything he says is a lie or a half truth. And technically she could. Maybe she should, since she wants to do it so badly. But it wouldn’t fix anything. She was stubborn, and she thought the world was out to get her because it was, and Thawne said he could fix it. He said he could help her fix it. That he would be proud of her.)
Six months is a thousand years to a speedster. Long enough for Nora to trust him. Her mother never talks about him. Wally and Cisco have of course mentioned him, but Wally talks more about his own enemies than about Barry’s even when she pesters him, and Cisco is… Distant is the best word for it. Certainly too distant to ever mention Eobard Thawne.
(“You can just call me Eobard,” he’d told her three months and hundreds upon hundreds of lessons in, patting her on the cheek. He didn’t touch her often, so when he did it was an event. When he did it meant that Nora had done something that made her worthy of touching and loving. It wasn’t that her mom wasn’t affectionate. They were just distant from each other despite Iris’s best efforts. Everything Nora did reminded her of Barry.)
Stupid. She was so stupid. She was such a stupid little girl, thinking that she could actually trust someone like that. Someone who just wanted to hurt her family. Her father. The same one he’d promised her a way to go back in time to meet when they first met. Stupid, stupid little girl, no wonder your mother never tells you anything if you’re just going to let it all slip out of your head, stupid-
(“What’s the first rule?” The soft voice prompted, and Nora hummed out what she thought was the right answer as she pressed her face up into her aunt’s chest with a yawn. It was too icy and wet to go outside or to school, but Iris still had work, so she’d called up a friend to watch her daughter for her. “That’s right. Don’t trust strangers. Never, never, ever. But if they hurt you, it isn’t your fault. Remember that part too, okay?”)
Nora knows she never should’ve trusted him. And she knew that all along, didn’t she? But she did it anyway. She was so desperate for somebody to look at her and tell her that she was good. Which was even stupider than trusting him, maybe, because it’s not like her mother or the various members of her extended family withheld praise. To some of them, she could do no wrong.
(“They look at you and they see your father,” Eobard had said, cupping her chin. “That’s why they care about you. I see what you could be. Your destiny. You don’t need to be just like the Flash to be a hero, Dawn-Nora. You don’t need to be like anybody else. Just listen to me, and you’ll be fine.”)
It’s not that she didn’t like them. She loved them, all of them. Or at least she did before she found out that she had powers, that her mom had been keeping that from her. That her mom had stolen her powers-Eobard’s words, not hers-so that Nora couldn’t be a hero. So that Nora couldn’t make her own choices. It was hard to imagine that the rest of her family knew anything about that. They were always so nice and sometimes Wally would say that he wished she had speed so she could go running with him, but-
(“Think about it,” Thawne said, and Nora squeezed her knees together as she hugged her shoulders, mind racing a mile a minute as she blinked spots out of her eyes. He’d hit her hard that time, but she supposed it was her own fault for not paying attention. “They didn’t tell you about the chip. I did. You can’t trust them. They don’t want you to be a hero. They don’t want you to help the world. They don’t care about you, not like I do.”)
Nora paces in figure-eights around the Twins, going so fast it’s hard to tell where she is at any given moment. The world moves slow for a speedster most of the time, but if she wants to she can speed it up, let it all pass her by as she sits in a bubble of nothing going so, so fast- but Eobard taught her that, he told her that there was always so much that she could learn from him, tricks on how to bend the laws of the speedforce without outright breaking them, and she swore she’d never do that, not again.
(“I trust you!” Nora rushed to say, slipping forward just a touch too fast and stopping when Eobard held up a hand. Her whole body was shaking enough to vibrate, little purple and yellow sparks flying off her skin and dissolving in the frigid air of the cell. “I promise, I trust you! Please don’t stop teaching me, I didn’t mean to-I just thought she would want to know, she’s always been nice to me, and-”)
It had been the worst when she told her aunt. It hadn’t even been much. She hadn’t shared details. Just said that she had a mentor now. And her aunt hadn’t pushed because she was perfect like that, and her uncle (who was there but not really paying attention, because he was attached to his wife at the hip) hadn’t either, and it’s not like she was doing anything wrong by telling them…
(“You know I just want what’s best for you, don’t you?” Eobard had said, circling her, and she had nodded. Of course he only wanted what was best for her. Not like her mom did, since her mom didn’t let her do anything because she thought Nora was made of glass, but like her dad would have.)
Nora had known that her mom was suspecting something about her. Something she hadn’t been able to hide. Maybe one of the bruises around her wrist hadn’t healed fast enough from when he’d grabbed it and squeezed tight enough that it hurt to make her remember. Maybe one of her aunts had said something. Maybe Iris had realized exactly who told her that she had powers. So Nora had lied even more.
(Nora wishes her mom had followed up on her suspicions. She wishes that now, looking back and realizing how horrible it was. But she was so trusting, and so convinced that Eobard had just wanted what was best for her. Even when he hurt her. Even when he told her that she had to lie to the father she’d never known, and to the mother that treated her like she was made of glass (or so he said she did, anyway). Even then.)
Nora knows it could have been worse. He could have been meddling with her life from when she was a young child, steering her toward her eventual meeting with him. And who’s to say he wasn’t? Just because she doesn’t remember it that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Maybe that’s even scarier. Nora doesn’t like to think about that. She doesn’t like to imagine him approaching her as a young child and doing that thing he does where he squeezes her shoulder just tight enough to remind her who’s in control.
(He was so kind. He told her over and over and over again how special she was. How she was going to be the best Flash there ever had been, even better than her father, even better than her Uncle Wally. The very best of the very best. And she’d believed him, and stumbled right into his web, and stayed there until it was too late and he’d already wrapped her in a cocoon of deadly silk.)
Years later, people will tell her that it’s not her fault. The people around her will blame themselves for not seeing it in time or doing something to stop it, and Nora will agree that they should have. She won’t be able to gather the strength to hate them for it through her constant exhaustion, but she will resent them for a long time. And that’s okay, they tell her. It’s okay. They should have been paying closer attention.
(At the same time, though, Nora knows she wasn’t quite a child when she first visited him. Too old to be considered “too young to know better.” She knows it’s her own fault for stumbling into it. For believing what he told her. Of course it’s her fault. She shouldn’t have listened to him. She shouldn’t have sought him out in the first place. Her mom tells her that she’s glad that she’s a hero now, that Nora has the courage to save people even after what happened to her dad in the line of duty. But Nora doesn’t know if she’s happy. She loves running. She loves her powers. But she hates how she found out about them.)
Nora manages to stop running and heaves for breath even though it hurts her lungs like someone’s punched her in the gut, choking down tears. It’s bad to run while crying. Eobard didn’t teach her that, at least. Experience did. At least some part of her power is hers, even if it’s something as stupid as knowing you shouldn’t cry while moving just shy of the speed of sound, which should seem obvious to anyone.
(It’s not fair. It’s like Eobard tainted her powers for her forever. Tainted her forever. Is she a bad person for listening to him? Maybe she can believe that she’s not a bad person for falling into his trap. That anybody could have done it, that she was just the latest in a long line of people led astray by his lies. Her mom tells her that her dad believed in Eobard, once, and that does make her feel a little better, but it still hurts.)
Nora braces her hands against her knees and tries to breathe. Later, people will tell her that it wasn’t her fault. Later, she’ll tell herself that it wasn’t her fault, and she’ll really mean it. Later, she’ll believe those other people, and she’ll believe herself, and she’ll know that it wasn’t really her fault at all. That all the blame rests on a jealous, twisted man who just wanted to see her family go up in flames for his own sick amusement because of a blood grudge.
(And maybe the worst of it is that she can’t just not forgive herself. She wants to go back to him. She wants to hear him praise her for lying to her family. She wants to hear him tell her that she’s the best of the very best. She wants to deserve his praise. Even though she knows she should hate him. And she does. She does hate him. But even though she hates him, she still wants his advice. His praise. It hurts. Even if years from now she’ll know she was right to hate him and stay away from him as much as she could.)
But today isn’t years from now. Today is today, and Nora doesn’t believe herself, and she doesn’t believe anybody else, and all she can do is cry to nobody because she can’t forgive herself for getting caught in a complex spider’s web of lies and deceit.